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...empty cordoned-off seats in Mexico City restaurants signal the latest attempt to stop the killer swine flu virus from spreading. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard on Tuesday ordered that the eateries serve take-out food only. He also called for the shut-down of other places where people could mingle: gyms, swimming pools and sports halls. Others on the long list of closed spaces: bars, discos, stadiums, museums, theaters, cinemas, church masses and of course, schools and universities. Any non-essential place where the public can meet, have fun and spread disease is off limits...
Rafael Camarena, a Mexico-City based analyst for Banco Santander of Spain, is convinced that government's strong-arm tactics will prove that Mexican authorities, criticized for ineffectiveness on other issues, can make the tough decisions - even if the virus threat proves to be exaggerated. "The authorities are being decisive and firm. This will help the economic damage be a short term thing and build up confidence in Mexico," Camarena says. However, for many in the service sector, the mayor's crackdown is seen as the equivalent of a nuclear attack on their already struggling businesses. Daniel Loeza, vice-president...
...hard to calculate exactly how many of these tactics have helped stop the virus from spreading. In the first four days following April 24 when the government started taking action, the number of infected and dead rose steadily - from 58 reported fatalities on Friday to 149 dead by the tally on Monday. The total number of people who have been hospitalized for the infection shot up to more than 2,000, although two-thirds of these had checked out after successfully responding to anti-viral drugs. (Read a story about how the U.S. is preparing a swine flu vaccine...
Much of the evaluation of the city's shutdown has been overshadowed by mounting criticism on the federal government for letting the virus get out of control in the first place. After alleging the first fatality from swine flu was a 39-year-old woman from the poor southern Mexican state of Oaxaca who died on April 13, Health Secretary Jose Córdova conceded that Edgar Hernandez, a four-year-old boy, who survived a bout of flu in February and March, had actually had the virus, as tests have now shown. Local authorities had raised alarm bells about...
Peppered with questions about the issue in a tense press conference, Córdova responded that there had been mixed signals from the flu epidemic in La Gloria and most who had taken ill had suffered from a familiar form of the influenza virus. He also said the government had no model of the H1N1 virus - which has features of avian, pig and human viruses - to base their studies on. "We never had this kind of epidemic in the world," he said on Monday. "This is the first time we have this kind of virus." As if to underline the point...